Hosted on the sidelines of the AI Impact Summit 2026, this roundtable, organised in collaboration with Apolitical, drew from findings from global survey of more than 8,000 public servants on government readiness for AI. Participants included Ahmed Tamim Hisham Al Kuttab, Chairman of the Department of Government Enablement in Abu Dhabi, Sameer Chauhan, Director of the United Nations International Computing Centre (UNICC), Katharina “Nina” F., Executive Director of the International Computation and AI Network (ICAIN), Henrietta Ridley, Chief AI, UNICEF, Nupura Gawde, Initiative Lead Digital Public Infrastructure at CivicDataLab and Ravi Shankar Chaturvedi, Global Practice Manager – Digital Economy and Society, The World Bank
The discussion highlighted a common pattern across ministries and agencies: strong ambition with 70% of governments planning to run AI pilots in 2026, but uneven institutional depth to support implementation with only 34% having policies in place to access technical AI expertise.
It also explored what the future of AI in the public sector requires. This includes AI-native government systems, updated AI skilling support from multilateral institutions, locally relevant small AI models suited to low-infrastructure contexts, and stronger governance frameworks to address gaps in child safety and ethical AI. A key takeaway was that institutional capability and policy coherence will ultimately determine how effectively AI translates into public value.
